From the Bookshelves #5: 'Pranks!'

Back in the days before the Internet, anyone craving to learn about fringe culture (like, say, yours truly) had to track down actual books from offbeat companies like Feral House, Loompanics and, in this case, RE/Search, a publisher founded by Andrea Juno and V.Vale and based (where else?) in San Francisco. RE/Search was responsible for memorable volumes devoted to William Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, "Modern Primitives," zine culture, "Incredibly Strange Music" (two great books) and, of course, "Incredibly Strange Films" (a true classic that I'll cover in this spot eventually).
But for me, the single volume that summed up what RE/Search was all about -- and exposed me to more fringe culture than I suspected existed -- was this 1987 book devoted to "Pranks!"

As you might have guessed by the somewhat disturbing cover, this is not a book about whoopie cushions, fake snot and flies in ice cubes. No, it's much more ambitious than that, devoting its 230-plus pages to all manner of cultural pranks, ranging from the innocently absurd (Jeffrey Vallance buys a frozen hen, then has it buried in a pet cemetery, complete with coffin and headstone) to the ominous and probably illegal (Boyd Rice describes trying to present a skinned sheep's head to former First Lady Betty Ford). Needless to say, to a goofball college student like myself, this was pretty crazy -- and crazily entertaining -- stuff. I didn't know how much was genuine and how much was bullshit, but it hardly made any difference. In this book, it was the stories themselves that mattered.
And believe me, there were some great stories. Ed Hardy (yes, that Ed Hardy) described a visit to Tokyo's Tattoo Museum, where actual human skin is on display, preserving the impressive works of tattoo art after their owners have gone to their graves, minus those surprisingly large patches of skin (and yes, Ed brought back photos). Mark Pauline shared tales of billboard vandalism (again, with photos) then segued into his claim to fame, the Survival Research Laboratories group, where giant machines battled it out, sometimes controlled by actual guinea pigs. And, most memorable of all, artist Joe Coleman told the story of how he attended a high school reunion (pretending to be a student who died years earlier) and, after mingling with the increasingly nervous crowd, took of his shirt and set off the explosives he had strapped to his chest. Sure, it sounds hard to believe, but the many photos included in the book confirm Coleman's outlandish tale.
And that's only scratching the surface. "Pranks" also features interviews (many surprisingly extensive -- the type is small!) with John Waters, Jello Biafra, Paul Krassner, Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Richard Meltzer, Paul Mavrides, Alan Abel and many more. Some are more entertaining than others, of course, but just about everyone in the book has at least one fascinating, funny or just plain strange. As a bonus, there are several pages of suitably offbeat quotations(sample: "A chained man need only shut his eyes to make the world explode." -- Octavio Paz) and an amazing newspaper clipping on the last page describing a prank phone call that resulted in a house being demolished.

"Pranks" is still easy to find, and there was even a sequel released a couple of years ago with some of the same folks interviewed. And sure, a lot of these people -- and a lot of these stories -- can be found somewhere in the deep, dark corners of the Internet. But really, when you're reading about some guy blowing himself up at a high school reunion or another guy spending a fortune to bury a frozen chicken, wouldn't you rather read about it in an honest-to-god book? It makes the whole affair seem that much more respectable.
And hell, that's a pretty good prank all by itself.